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Log Transformations for Skewed and Wide Distributions
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This is a guest article by Nina Zumel and John Mount, authors of the new book Practical Data Science with R. For readers of this blog, there is a 50% discount off the "Practical Data Science with R" book, simply by using the code pdswrblo when reaching checkout (until the 30th this month). Here is the post:
Normalizing data by mean and standard deviation is most meaningful when the data distribution is roughly symmetric. In this article, based on chapter 4 of Practical Data Science with R, the authors show you a transformation that can make some distributions more symmetric.
The need for data transformation can depend on the modeling method that you plan to use. For linear and logistic regression, for example, you ideally want to make sure that the relationship between input variables and output variables is approximately linear, that the input variables are approximately normal in distribution, and that the output variable is constant variance (that is, the variance of the output variable is independent of the input variables). You may need to transform some of your input variables to better meet these assumptions.
In this article, we will look at some log transformations and when to use them.
Monetary amounts—incomes, customer value, account or purchase sizes—are some of the most commonly encountered sources of skewed distributions in data science applications. In fact, as we discuss in Appendix B: Important Statistical Concepts, monetary amounts are often lognormally distributed—that is, the log of the data is normally distributed. This leads us to the idea that taking the log of the data can restore symmetry to it. We demonstrate this in figure 1.
For the purposes of modeling, which logarithm you use—natural logarithm, log base 10 or log base 2—is generally not critical. In regression, for example, the choice of logarithm affects the magnitude of the coefficient that corresponds to the logged variable, but it doesn't affect the value of the outcome. I like to use log base 10 for monetary amounts, because orders of ten seem natural for money: $100, $1000, $10,000, and so on. The transformed data is easy to read.
An aside on graphing
The difference between using the ggplot layer scale_x_log10 on a densityplot of income and plotting a densityplot of log10(income) is primarily axis labeling. Using scale_x_log10 will label the x-axis in dollars amounts, rather than in logs.
It's also generally a good idea to log transform data with values that range over several orders of magnitude. First, because modeling techniques often have a difficult time with very wide data ranges, and second, because such data often comes from multiplicative processes, so log units are in some sense more natural.
For example, when you are studying weight loss, the natural unit is often pounds or kilograms. If I weigh 150 pounds, and my friend weighs 200, we are both equally active, and we both go on the exact same restricted-calorie diet, then we will probably both lose about the same number of pounds—in other words, how much weight we lose doesn't (to first order) depend on how much we weighed in the first place, only on calorie intake. This is an additive process.
On the other hand, if management gives everyone in the department a raise, it probably isn't by giving everyone $5000 extra. Instead, everyone gets a 2 percent raise: how much extra money ends up in my paycheck depends on my initial salary. This is a multiplicative process, and the natural unit of measurement is percentage, not absolute dollars. Other examples of multiplicative processes: a change to an online retail site increases conversion (purchases) for each item by 2 percent (not by exactly two purchases); a change to a restaurant menu increases patronage every night by 5 percent (not by exactly five customers every night). When the process is multiplicative, log-transforming the process data can make modeling easier.
Of course, taking the logarithm only works if the data is non-negative. There are other transforms, such as arcsinh, that you can use to decrease data range if you have zero or negative values. I don't like to use arcsinh, because I don't find the values of the transformed data to be meaningful. In applications where the skewed data is monetary (like account balances or customer value), I instead use what I call a "signed logarithm". A signed logarithm takes the logarithm of the absolute value of the variable and multiplies by the appropriate sign. Values with absolute value less than one are mapped to zero. The difference between log and signed log are shown in figure 2.
Here's how to calculate signed log base 10, in R:
signedlog10 = function(x) { ifelse(abs(x) <= 1, 0, sign(x)*log10(abs(x))) } |
Clearly this isn't useful if values below unit magnitude are important. But with many monetary variables (in US currency), values less than a dollar aren't much different from zero (or one), for all practical purposes. So, for example, mapping account balances that are less than a dollar to $1 (the equivalent every account always having a minimum balance of one dollar) is probably okay.
Once you've got the data suitably cleaned and transformed, you are almost ready to start the modeling stage.
At some point, you will have data that is as good quality as you can make it. You've fixed problems with missing data, and performed any needed transformations. You are ready to go on the modeling stage. Remember, though, that data science is an iterative process. You may discover during the modeling process that you have to do additional data cleaning or transformation.
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'US anti-terrorism policy violates human rights' – Jimmy Carter
Former US president Jimmy Carter has criticized America's actions against terrorism, saying that drones attacks and targeted assassination of suspicious people are undermining America's "role as the global champion of human rights."
In his critical article "A Cruel and Unusual Record" published in the New York Times, Jimmy Carter said that with all the revolutions sweeping around the world, America should "make the world safer." Instead, however, "America's violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends," he argues. US's government counterterrorism policies, Carter says, are now clearly violating at least 10 of the 30 articles written in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation's violation of human rights has extended," Carter writes. These violations of human rights began after the terrorist attack of 9/11. Having been "sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions," Carter bemoaned a "lack of dissent from the general public"."As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues," the 39th president wrote. Carter says that "death of innocent women and children" within drone attacks on those who are said to be "enemy terrorists" are accepted "as inevitable". However, that is something that "would have been unthinkable in previous times"."After more than 30 airstrikes on civilian homes in Afghanistan this year, President Hamid Karzai has demanded that such attacks end, but the practice continues in areas of Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen that are not in any war zone," writes Carter.He adds that it is unknown "how many hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed" in attacks that have all been "approved by the highest authorities in Washington.""Top intelligence and military officials, as well as rights defenders in targeted areas, affirm that the great escalation in drone attacks has turned aggrieved families toward terrorist organizations, aroused civilian populations against us and permitted repressive governments to cite such actions to justify their own despotic behavior," writes Carter. Carter's critical article comes less than a week after the UN's report on the use of drone strikes by the US to combat terrorism.On June, 21, UN rapporteur, Christof Heyns, said that the US needs to be held legally accountable for the use of armed drones.He requested that the Obama administration publish statistics on the number of civilian deaths caused by strikes on suspected terror leaders in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen.Heyns underlined the fact that recent US drone strikes threatened the rule of international law in that many "targeted killings take place far from areas where it's recognized as being an armed conflict." Speaking about human rights, Carter also mentioned that recent laws allow "unprecedented violations of our rights to privacy through warrantless wiretapping and government mining of our electronic communications".Jimmy Carter has called for Washington to "reverse course and regain moral leadership".

subset: commoncrawl


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- University of Utah - Learn Genetics - Epigenetics
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - Genomics and Precision Health - What is Epigenetics?
- National Center for Biotechnology Information - PubMed Central - Epigenetics: Principles and Practice
- MedlinePlus - What is epigenetics?
- British Society for Cell Biology - Epigenetics – It's not just genes that make us
- National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences - Epigenetics
- Frontiers - Epigenetics across the human lifespan
- Biology LibreTexts - Epigenetics
- University of Nebraska Pressbooks - Epigenetics: A Healthy Life Starts Earlier Than You Think
- Key People:
- Rudolf Jaenisch
- Related Topics:
- genetics
- Lamarckism
- On the Web:
- MedlinePlus - What is epigenetics? (Feb. 20, 2024)
Recent News
epigenetics, the study of the chemical modification of specific genes or gene-associated proteins of an organism. Epigenetic modifications can define how the information in genes is expressed and used by cells. The term epigenetics came into general use in the early 1940s, when British embryologist Conrad Waddington used it to describe the interactions between genes and gene products, which direct development and give rise to an organism's phenotype (observable characteristics). Since then, information revealed by epigenetics studies has revolutionized the fields of genetics and developmental biology. Specifically, researchers have uncovered a range of possible chemical modifications to deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and to proteins called histones that associate tightly with DNA in the nucleus. These modifications can determine when or even if a given gene is expressed in a cell or an organism.
Types of epigenetic modifications
The principal type of epigenetic modification that is understood is methylation (addition of a methyl group). Methylation can be transient and can change rapidly during the life span of a cell or organism, or it can be essentially permanent once set early in the development of the embryo. Other largely permanent chemical modifications also play a role; these include histone acetylation (addition of an acetyl group), ubiquitination (the addition of a ubiquitin protein), and phosphorylation (the addition of a phosphoryl group). The specific location of a given chemical modification can also be important. For example, certain histone modifications distinguish actively expressed regions of the genome from regions that are not highly expressed. These modifications may correlate with chromosome banding patterns generated by staining procedures common in karyotype analyses. Similarly, specific histone modifications may distinguish actively expressed genes from genes that are poised for expression or genes that are repressed in different kinds of cells.
Epigenetic inheritance
It is clear that at least some epigenetic modifications are heritable, passed from parents to offspring in a phenomenon that is generally referred to as epigenetic inheritance, or passed down through multiple generations via transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. The mechanism by which epigenetic information is inherited is unclear; however, it is known that this information, because it is not captured in the DNA sequence, is not passed on by the same mechanism as that used for typical genetic information. Typical genetic information is encoded in the sequences of nucleotides that make up the DNA; this information is therefore passed from generation to generation as faithfully as the DNA replication process is accurate. Many epigenetic modifications, in fact, are spontaneously "erased" or "reset" when cells reproduce (whether by meiosis or mitosis), thereby precluding their inheritance.
Impact of epigenetics on biomedicine
Epigenetic changes not only influence the expression of genes in plants and animals but also enable the differentiation of pluripotent stem cells (cells having the potential to become any of many different kinds of cells). In other words, epigenetic changes allow cells that all share the same DNA and are ultimately derived from one fertilized egg to become specialized—for example, as liver cells, brain cells, or skin cells.
As the mechanisms of epigenetics have become better understood, researchers have recognized that the epigenome—chemical modification at the level of the genome—also influences a wide range of biomedical conditions. This new perception has opened the door to a deeper understanding of normal and abnormal biological processes and has offered the possibility of novel interventions that might prevent or ameliorate certain diseases.
Epigenetic contributions to disease fall into two classes. One class involves genes that are themselves regulated epigenetically, such as the imprinted (parent-specific) genes associated with Angelman syndrome or Prader-Willi syndrome. Clinical outcomes in cases of these syndromes depend on the degree to which an inherited normal or mutated gene is or is not expressed. The other class involves genes whose products participate in the epigenetic machinery and thereby regulate the expression of other genes. For example, the gene MECP2 (methyl CpG binding protein 2) encodes a protein that binds to specific methylated regions of DNA and contributes to the silencing of those sequences. Mutations that impair the MECP2 gene can lead to Rett syndrome.
Many tumours and cancers involve epigenetic changes attributable to environmental factors. These changes include a general decrease in methylation, which is thought to contribute to the increased expression of growth-promoting genes, punctuated by gene-specific increases in methylation that are thought to silence tumour-suppressor genes. Epigenetic signaling attributed to environmental factors has also been associated with some characteristics of aging by researchers that studied the apparently unequal aging rates in genetically identical twins.
One of the most promising areas of epigenetic investigation involves stem cells. Researchers have understood for some time that epigenetic mechanisms play a key role in defining the "potentiality" of stem cells. As those mechanisms become clearer, it may become possible to intervene and effectively alter the developmental state and even the tissue type of given cells. The implications of this work for future clinical regenerative intervention for conditions ranging from trauma to neurodegenerative disease are profound.
Judith L. Fridovich-Keil


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Non Owner Insurance for North Carolina Drivers
Drivers in North Carolina may be required to obtain non owners insurance for the the following:
- Acquire a North Carolina drivers license
- New NC residents who want to obtain a license
- To reinstate a suspended North Carolina license
Our agents can help you obtain non owners insurance coverage today.
NC Minimum Automobile Insurance Requirements
Basic coverage is referred to as 30/60/25 coverage with 30/60 UM limits.
- Bodily Injury: $30,000/$60,000
- Property Damage: $25,000
- Uninsured Motorist Bodily Injury: $30,000/$60,000
- Uninsured Motorist Property Damage: $25,000


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Way Too Indie's Top 13 Most Anticipated Films At Cannes 2012
The 65th annual Cannes Film Festival is underway currently and the staff at Way Too Indie wanted to highlight the Top 13 Films we are anticipating to see the most. We are still about a week away before we will be hearing from the jury which films they decided to give awards to. There are over 20 films that are in the In Competition category and if we had to guess who walks away with top prize of the Palme d'Or, it would be one of the films we listed below. Without further ado, Way Too Indie's Top 13 Most Anticipated Films at Cannes Film Festival 2012.
Immediately after watching the trailer to Beasts of the Southern Wild I made note that this is a film I need to see. Chatter around this film started when it won the dramatic Grand Jury Prize Award at Sundance this year. It looks like it could have some Where the Wild Things Are elements to it but perhaps with a more gritty and serious story to it. If Beasts of the Southern Wild is half as good as the trailer makes it out to be, we should be in for a real treat with this film. Roger Ebert recently tweeted that Beasts of the Southern Wild is the best film he has seen this year. Cue the goosebumps. [Dustin]
UPDATE: Our review of Beasts of the Southern Wild
After Battle in Heaven, Carlos Reygadas must have had some sort of epiphany. His follow-up, Silent Light, was one of the best movies of the last 10 years and felt like it was light years ahead of everything he did previously. His most recent work, the short film This is my Kingdom from the omnibus film Revolucion, might be his best work to date. Post Tenebras Lux looks like Reygadas is only maturing and developing even more. The first images and clips from the movie are jaw-droppingly gorgeous, the director of Cannes has been more or less openly gushing about it, and it's already being compared to Tree of Life. Reygadas is one of the more exciting directors working today, and if Post Tenebras Lux lives up to the hype it should be unlike anything we've seen before. [CJ]
Director Jeff Nichols is on a hot streak. His first feature Shotgun Stories was an indie sensation and had a lot of people singing his name from the rafters as a promising young director. Then his second feature with Michael Shannon (who is one of the top actors right now), Take Shelter, was a great step for the director. Working again with Shannon and few other top actors including Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Paulson, Sam Shepard and Joe Don Baker (a personal favorite), Mud looks to be a winner with this pedigree working together. [Blake]
The mere fact that it has been three years since Wes Anderson has graced us with his unprecedented style and passion is reason enough to want to see Moonrise Kingdom. The film is about capturing the feeling of being madly in love at the tender age of 12. Backed by the cast of his regulars, Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzmann along with some Anderson newcomers Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton is another reason why I am excited to see this film. [Dustin]
UPDATE: Our review of Moonrise Kingdom
I've only seen two movies by Joe (his nickname for people who have a hard time pronouncing his full name) but they're both masterpieces. Joe's films are so hypnotic, bizarre and immersive with their lack of focus on time or narrative that they can feel like they come from another plane of existence entirely. Mekong Hotel sounds like a horror film from its synopsis involving a cannibalistic ghost but things are never that simple with Joe's movies. Here's hoping that Mekong Hotel can live up to at least half of the quality of his other films. [CJ]
Jacques Audiard made a great movie a few years ago called A Prophet which made my top ten list the year it came out. I then went back to watch his breakout feature The Beat That My Heart Skipped, which is one hell of a movie. Now comes Rust and Bone, with Oscar winner Marion Cotillard as a killer whale trainer who falls in love a man named Ali. There bond only grows stronger after Stephanie (Cotillard) suffers a horrible accident. [Blake]
Willing to overlook Michel Gondry's previous Hollywood adventure The Green Hornet in hopes that he has returned to his old style of films that put him on the map as an acclaimed film director. His more avant-garde style of films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep show off his creativity as a visionary director. Not a lot is known about this film yet but the talk is the film is closer to his earlier work. Knowing his potential, it is hard not to look forward to see what Michel Gondry has come up with now. [Dustin]
Michael Haneke is back from his massive success involving The White Ribbon with what looks like something on a smaller scale. As with most of Haneke's films the information given out so far is limited. It involves a family whose lives change after the mother has "an attack." Isabelle Huppert, who gave Haneke the Palme D'Or for White Ribbon, has what looks like a small role in this so hopefully their collaboration will be as good as when they got together for The Piano Teacher. Haneke is considered to be one of the best directors working today by some (including myself) so no matter what there will always be an excited audience for whatever Haneke does next. [CJ]
Formerly titled Coogan's Trade, Andrew Dominik's newest film has internet film geeks abuzz with its powerhouse cast being lead by the director who has made two fantastic features in Chopper and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and starring one of the biggest, if not the biggest actor on the planet Brad Pitt. Along with Pitt you got, Richard Jenkins, Sam Shepard (him again), James Gandolfini and Ray Liotta. Pitt plays a mob enforcer tasked with investigating the robbery of a mob run poker game. All this talent has me salivating at the mouth. [Blake]
The synopsis of Laurence Anyways, a man on this 30th birthday tries to save his relationship with his fiancé after telling her he wants to become a woman, made me curious enough to watch the trailer. After watching the trailer, it looks to be an emotional filled unique love story. Xavier Dolan's first two films I Killed My Mother and Heartbeats also both premiered at Cannes cementing him as an acclaimed upcoming director. Unlike his previous films, in Laurence Anyways he decides to stay behind the camera instead of also acting in the film. [Dustin]
After making more conventional films for almost a decade, David Cronenberg appears to be diving head first into the weird-ass types of films that made him get so popular in the first place. It seems like people didn't realize how much they missed the days of Dead Ringers or Videodrome until the first trailers for Cosmopolis came out, launching it straight into a position as one of the most anticipated films this year. Hopefully Cronenberg can live up to the hype that's suddenly surrounded this movie in the last few weeks. [CJ]
Ulrich Seidl is a director I've never heard of before, but one that I will now follow, and the trailer has me completely sold. The subject matter sounds ripe for the picking and the style of the film, which looks like a documentary, will only add to how powerful the film could end up being. Taking place in a tropical paradise, a white middle aged woman who is on vacation becomes involved with a local a black man. Judging from the trailer, love and heartbreak look to be inevitable. [Blake]
This wasn't on my radar at all until I saw the fantastic trailer for it along with the bizarre synopsis involving the massive star-studded French cast playing themselves performing a play they've all been in at some point throughout their careers after the playwright posthumously invites them to see a young theatre company perform the same play (you might need to read that a few times to fully understand it). Resnais is still going strong in his later years, and if anything his new movie is going to be one of the more unique titles in competition this year. [CJ]


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A Boy and His Blob
A Boy and His Blob
Game released: 2009
Developer: WayForward Technologies
Production: Commercial
Platforms: Wii
Price: $30.00
Genre: Platformer
Setting: Fantasy
Modes: Singleplayer
Accessibility: casual gamers
Scope: Medium (2-10 hours)
Aesthetic: 2d, hand-painted
Mechanics: bosses, fighting, flying, infinite lives, instant death, jumping, platforms, puzzles
Themes: adventure, companionship, exploration, joy, loneliness, wonder
Worth Reading
Above 49
The blogging of Nels Anderson, of Hothead Games.
Action Button
Thoughtful (if at times meandering and too long) game reviews by Tim Rogers et al. The reviews are mostly of commercial games, though some indie goodness sneaks through.
Auntie Pixelante
Wonderful games, pixels, and thoughts from Anna Anthropy.
Critical Distance
Ben Abraham posts weekly compilations of interesting articles on video games, as well as critical compilations for individual games. Oh yeah, and he's got a podcast.
Digital Tools
As Chris Lepine said, "Martin's short and eclectic articles bring together an impressive range of writing, from in-depth interviews with a wide range of developers, to technical inspirations normally found in the workshop of a mad clockmaker. His interests in the mechanical, retro, conceptual, and algorithmic, should inspire any fellow artist or creative mind to pursue their own unique development style."
Emily Short
Emily Short is one of the more celebrated and prolific interactive fiction writers around, and her blog is full of great writing on interactive fiction and interactive storytelling in general.
Evolution Live
A nice blog on "exploration in game design" from Alex Snyder, a cool dude.
Game In Mind
Great thoughts on games from always-humble Matthew G Kaplan.
Game Studies
A serious peer-reviewed journal of game research. You'll find lengthy academic articles probing the inner (and outer) workings of computer games.
Hardcore Gaming 101
Nice reviews of classic games, and accompanying blog.
Ian Bogost
Ian Bogost may just be the smartest guy in academia who's taking games seriously.
Lost Garden
Daniel Cook writes essays on game development, game design, game theory, game marketing, the future of gaming, and more.
My Shared Items
The most interesting of the articles I've been reading lately. Generally these articles will come from the other sources listed here, and sometimes I include notes. A bit arrogant to say my personal reading list is "worth reading," but I don't have anywhere else to put it, really.
Only a Game
Chris Bateman talks philosophy and games.
Sexy Videogameland
Insightful thoughts and opinions from Leigh Alexander, news director at Gamasutra.
The Artful Gamer
Musings on art and games by Chris Lepine.
The Brainy Gamer
Michael Abbott dissects games in a very good way. Also hosts the Vintage Game Club, which you should definitely check out.
The Escapist
Consistently features good articles on video games.
The Pretentious Gamer
Bryan and Jusin Ma: two guys who know how to rock pretention almost as well as I do ;)
Trent Polack
An English major who works in the games industry and likes to program in his spare time? Trent Polack is just such a dude.
Indie Love
Indie games publisher and creator of Torque development tools.
Home of the Underdogs
Phenomenal site with reviews and downloads of tons of old games you can no longer find in stores. This site is an unofficial continuation of the original HOTU, which was founded by shockingly brilliant Sarinee Achavanunta in 1998. Come back to us Sarinee!
Independent Games Festival: the biggest compo in indie games. Check out the past winners to find some real gems.
Indie Game Mag
Reviews of independent games, in web and magazine format.
Indie Informer
Indie games news aggregator.
IndieGamer Forums
The largest indie game developer forum. Talk about everything from game design to guerilla marketing. Emphasis on business.
Jay is Games
The be all, end all casual gaming portal. This is what they should all be like.
Play This Thing!
Decent coverage of out-of-the-mainstream games, including quite a bit of interactive fiction, and the occasional board game.
Retro Remakes
What it sounds like. If you're nostalgic for retro gaming, go here.
The Daily Click
A community of game creator hobbyists who use Clickteam tools.
The Experimental Gameplay Project
New experimental games every month from some talented developers. Yummy.
Indie gaming forums with an emphasis on indie. And gaming. A really great community with compos, jams, monocles and more.
Your one stop shop for indie gaming news, from Derek Yu et. all. I founded this site way back in the day.


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Name: Birthday Drip Cake
Drip cake is the most beautiful in the life of that a moment, like epiphyllum blooms burst, appreciable, but unpossessed, and now we can use our both hands to stay beautiful, at the most gorgeous moment.
5 days advance notice is required for this cake order.
For customisation or modification of size, please kindly get in touch with us at
94511124 or email us at firstname.lastname@example.com
Return & Refund Policy
*No food testing, No refund for cancellation
Product Info
Different Sizes for your guest capacity:
1 tier (Size-6"):
Estimate to serve ~ 8 pax
1 tier (Size-8"):
Estimate to serve ~ 16 pax
1 tier (Size-10"):
Estimate to serve ~ 24 pax


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Best Experiences in Utrecht Science Park Utrecht
Local Recommendations from our My Guide Amsterdam team
There is no better way to experience Amsterdam than by taking a tour or taking part in a local activity. Amsterdam has an abundance of activities to choose from. You name it and Amsterdam has every mode of transport covered from the simple walking tour, to a relaxing bus tour. You have great sporting facilities and other activties like beer and cheese tasting.
Boats and bicycles are two of the most popular ways to travel around the city, with hundreds of Km's of canals and bike lanes. If pedal power seems like hard work then why not opt for the comfort of a boat t tour around the canals. To get out and about and see the life outside Amsterdam then why not take a countryside tour and visit beautiful Dutch villages and picturesque windmills.


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My colleagues and I at the California Studies Association were shocked and saddened to hear that Jonathan Rowe passed away suddenly last week. He was 65.
I met Jon on the CSA steering committee. Our 2007 conference on the crisis of the California commons intersected with his work at the Tomales Bay Institute in Point Reyes, where he also hosted a public affairs program on KWMR.
Over the next few years, I appeared on the program twice to discuss my books. I also guest-hosted when Jon was out of town, joined his local pick-up basketball game, and visited him and his family at their home. He was damn good company.
I'm not familiar with every aspect of Jon's work, but he was extraordinarily productive and versatile. He grew up in Boston, was trained as a lawyer, and worked for Ralph Nader early on. He also served as a congressional staffer and wrote for the Christian Science Monitor, American Prospect, Washington Monthly, and many other publications.
Jon did all of his own thinking, wrote beautifully, and was a shrewd observer of people and politics. "The Language of Strangers," his 2008 piece on community journalism in West Marin, is a minor masterpiece.
You can also see Jon's genius and originality in the Senate testimony he gave a few years ago; some of it appeared in the June 2008 issue of Harper's magazine under the title, "Our Phony Economy."
Jon's friends are putting together a website with more of his work--190 articles now and counting.
Last weekend, Jon went to the gym and came home feeling bad. That night, he had a high fever and went to the hospital. He died the next morning. Frankly, it's hard for me to fathom, but I wanted to make sure I honored Jon by calling attention to his life and work.


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Book News: Reading And Writing Slow Dementia, Study Says
The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.
- A study published in the scholarly journal Neurology [subscription only] says that, although there is no cure for dementia, "reading, writing, and playing games" can slow the disease's progress. The scientists, led by Robert S. Wilson, asked 294 patients about their reading habits over the course of about 6 years, and then tested their brains for dementia after their deaths. The study showed that mentally active patients — ones who read and wrote regularly — declined at a significantly slower rate than those who had an average amount of activity. (Related news from the Shots blog and Morning Edition: "Finding Simple Tests For Brain Disorders Turns Out To Be Complex.")
- The MI5 file on George Orwell holds some amusingly incriminating evidence: "He dresses in bohemian fashion both at his office and in his leisure hours." (As quoted in Alex Danchev's review of British Writers and MI5 Surveillance 1930-1960, by James Smith.)
- Physician and best-selling author Oliver Sacks writes about why he's looking forward to turning 80 in an essay for The New York Times: "At 80, one can take a long view and have a vivid, lived sense of history not possible at an earlier age. I can imagine, feel in my bones, what a century is like, which I could not do when I was 40 or 60. I do not think of old age as an ever grimmer time that one must somehow endure and make the best of, but as a time of leisure and freedom, freed from the factitious urgencies of earlier days, free to explore whatever I wish, and to bind the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime together."
- Buzzfeed's "27 Broiest Books That Bros Like To Read" matrix is shockingly apt.
- The novelist Joyce Carol Oates inspired an impassioned debate on Friday with a series of tweets that implicitly linked Islam and sexual harassment in Egypt. She wrote: "Where 99.3% of women report having been sexually harassed & rape is epidemic — Egypt — [it's] natural to inquire: what's the predominant religion?" The response was immediate and angry, with writers such as Teju Cole taking offense. Oates later qualified her statement, writing that "Blaming religion(s) for cruel behavior of believers may be a way of not wishing to acknowledge they'd be just as cruel if secular." (Related news on Weekend Edition Sunday: "Sexual Assaults Reportedly Rampant During Egypt Protests.")
The Best Books Coming Out This Week:
- Howard Norman's I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place is a lovely, moody series of autobiographical essays that seeks to explain, "How does someone with a confused soul, as I consider mine to be, try to gain some clarity and keep some emotional balance and find some joy, especially after a number of incidents of arresting strangeness have happened in life?"
- Mark Kurlansky's Ready For a Brand New Beat: How "Dancing in the Street" Became the Anthem for a Changing America is a brisk, compelling social history that shows how the Motown dance hit turned into an symbol for social change.


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Fitting in: Newly evolved genes adopt a variety of strategies to remain in the gene pool
The largest-ever experimental analysis of duplicated genes provides insight into mechanisms of evolution
Zürich, Switzerland – When Mother Nature creates an identical copy of a gene in an organism's genome, the duplicated copy is usually deleted, inactivated, or otherwise rendered nonfunctional in order to prevent genetic redundancy and to preserve biological homeostasis. In some cases, however, gene duplicates are maintained in a functional state. Until now, the biological and evolutionary forces behind the maintenance of these duplicates as functional components of the genome have remained unclear.
To determine the basis for the persistence of functional gene duplicates in the genome, three scientists at the Institute of Molecular Systems Biology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich have collaborated on the largest systematic analysis of duplicated gene function to date. Using an integrative combination of computational and experimental approaches, they classified duplicate pairs of genes involved in yeast metabolism into four functional categories: (1) back-up, where a duplicate gene copy has acquired the ability to compensate in the absence of the other copy, (2) subfunctionalization, where a duplicate copy has evolved a completely new, non-overlapping function, (3) regulation, where the differential regulation of duplicates fine-tunes pathway usage, and (4) gene dosage, where the increased expression provided by the duplicate gene copy augments production of the corresponding protein.
Their results, which appear in the October issue of the journal Genome Research, indicate that no single role prevails but that all four of the mechanisms play a substantial role in maintaining duplicate genes in the genome.
"Our results contradict other recent publications that have focused on a single selective pressure as the basis for the retention of gene duplicates," explains Dr. Uwe Sauer, principal investigator on the project and Professor at the Institute of Molecular Systems Biology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. "We show that, at least for yeast metabolism, the persistence of the duplicated fraction of the genome can be better explained with an array of different, often overlapping functional roles."
Yeast metabolism provides an ideal model for investigating the functional basis for gene duplication because a large proportion of genes involved in this biological process have been duplicated. Of the 672 genes involved in yeast metabolism, 295 genes can be classified into 105 families of duplicates. To put this into perspective, the yeast genome has an estimated total of 6,000 genes, 1,500 of which are considered to be duplicates. An ancient whole-genome duplication event is thought to be responsible for the formation of many of these duplicate copies.
Sauer's group demonstrated that of the 105 families of duplicated gene families involved in yeast metabolism, 34 demonstrated back-up function, 19 were involved in increased gene dosage, 18 exhibited regulatory functions, and 18 had evolved new, more specialized functions. Therefore, each of these mechanisms plays a substantial and important role in the maintenance of functional duplicates in the gene pool.


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Paul McCartney, ZZ Top, Mumford & Sons, Wilco, Gov't Mule, Baroness and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are among the acts scheduled to appear at this year's Bonnaroo festival, which will take place June 13 to 16 in Manchester, Tennessee.
The current Bonnaroo bill, which was announced by "Weird Al" Yankovic yesterday during Bonnaroo's Live Lineup Announcement Megathon live stream, also includes Billy Idol, Grizzly Bear, David Byrne and St. Vincent, Dwight Yoakam, the Vaccines, Tame Impala, Jim James, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, A$AP Rocky, Passion Pit, The xx, Alt-J, Animal Collective, Matt and Kim, Kendrick Lamar, Japandroids and Portugal. The Man.
Other acts include Yankovic — who recently roasted Dee Snider at our Rock & Roll Roast (Check out the video here) — plus the Gaslight Anthem, Local Natives, the National, Holy Ghost, Killer Mike, Big K.R.I.T., Death Grips, Of Monsters and Men and more.
Keep up with Bonnaroo news at the event's official website.


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- Home
- Government
- Departments
- City Administration
- About Your City Government
About Your City Government
The City of Emeryville has a City Council - City Manager government. Under this form of government, the Emeryville City Council is the legislative body responsible for setting city policy and adopting the city budget. The City Manager is the administrative head of the city government and Executive Director of the Redevelopment Agency.
The City Council appoints the City Manager who, in addition to administrative and executive duties, oversees policy implementation and management of all city operations.
Charter City
On November 4, 2014, the voters of Emeryville passed Measure U which established the City of Emeryville as a charter city. The City was originally founded in 1896 as a general law city.
Charter cities, unlike general law cities, are authorized by the State Constitution to govern themselves in matters considered to be municipal affairs. When a city is incorporated as or later becomes a charter city, the electorate essentially adopts a municipal "constitution" or charter that grants and/or limits the city's powers related to municipal affairs, such as but not limited to, certain taxation authority, local elections, local campaign financing, and contracting. General law cities do not have the authority to establish any powers relating to municipal affairs that are different than what is granted by the laws of the State of California.
The Emeryville City Charter approved by the voters of Emeryville specifically establishes that the City's new powers over municipal affairs will be limited solely to municipal revenue including taxation and assessment, and a system for a real property transfer tax. These powers have historically been found by the State courts to be municipal affairs. The Emeryville Charter states that in all other respects, the powers of the City shall remain as they were previously and therefore shall be constrained by, subject to, and governed by the general laws of the State of California.


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So I'm curious about this one. The Cult of Mac has a blog post claiming that "the lead architect of Microsoft's Windows 95," a man named Satoshi Nakajima, is now developing software for the iPhone.
The thing is, I've never heard of Satoshi Nakajima.
What I'm wondering is, was Nakajimi really the lead architect of Windows 95? He's described in three different ways in this blog post:
- Microsoft's Windows 95 architect
- the lead architect of Microsoft's Windows 95
- the software architect of Windows 95 and 98
So which is it? My guess is, it's none of them, not really. My guess is that Nakajimi is just one of thousands of developers who worked on Windows 95. Maybe higher up than your average developer, maybe not. I can't find many other relevant references to him online because the Web is so busy republishing this (dubious?) Cult of Mac story, so all the Nakajimi references are just re-quotes from that one post. His name doesn't appear in any of the many tell-all books about Microsoft I own, but I did find him mentioned in a recent Wall Street Journal article, so I assume that's where the Cult of Mac heard about him. Here's how the WSJ describes him:
Mr. Nakajima, a former longtime Microsoft software engineer ...
Time for ten seconds of research.
I tried to contact the blog post author, someone named Lonnie Lazar. But there's no mention of him on the site's About Us page at all.
I tried to contact Mr. Nakajima on his new company's "Web site" (really a lame blog), but there's no contact info there either. (It literally says "Under construction" on the Contact Us page.)
However, Wikipedia does mention the following:
Satoshi Nakajima ... after thirteen and half years of his work at Microsoft where he had been a software architect for Windows 95/98 and Internet Explorer 3.0/4.0. [Emphasis mine.—Paul]
So ... Was this guy really the architect/lead architect of Windows 95? Or is he really just one of thousands of ex-Microsoft software developers out there (i.e. "a software architect")?
I think it's the latter.
I think some guy who's not even referenced on the Cult of Mac blog has trumped up this guy's credentials to make this story seem more fascinating.
And I think the entire blogosphere just fell for it.
But hey, I could be wrong. I'm OK with it either way, really.
But why have I never heard of this guy?


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A house built to grow with the family
MORE AT this old house
Fall in love with an existing house, and you expand where you can, praying the family doesn't outgrow it.
But fall in love with an empty plot of land, and you might do what architect Robert Lesnett did: build a house that's prefigured to grow with you.
When he found his dream lot in 1954, a woody three-quarters of an acre in West Los Angeles, Lesnett knew an add-as-you-go frame was a must for his young family.
Post and beam
His background as an architect led him to a most practical idea: Design the house with very few load-bearing walls in the interior, and he'd be able to expand and reconfigure as necessary. The post-and-beam frame he employed allowed him to add a master suite, expand the garage, tack on a laundry room, and remodel the kitchen—all without disturbing the basic structure.
Custom touches, like this floating credenza in the entry hall, make practical use of the exposed posts.
The expansion plan
He started with three basic boxes that meet to form a Y shape. The short legs of the Y contained the living area, connected by a hallway to Lesnett's study, and a two-car garage, respectively. The longer box held the dining room, followed by a powder room, the family room, two kids' bedrooms, and the master suite. A bumpout off the dining room housed the kitchen. All the boxes were built the same way: with an especially thick 6-by-14-inch ridge beam supporting rafters 3 feet on center, resting on a header that transmits the roof's weight to posts on the perimeter.
"It's a simple grid," Lesnett explains. "Wherever the exterior wood wall panels meet, which is about every 6 feet, there's a structural post. It's the same with the wall-sized panels of glass. So aside from a few bearing walls, you have an open plan where the partition walls can come and go with no additional roof support."
[Ready to remodel your home? Click to find the right contractor now.]
Master bedroom
Twelve years after completing the house, he tested his plan, clipping off the south front corner and extending an existing corridor through the opening into a new 650-square-foot master suite. As in the other wings, the new 27-foot-long addition got its own sturdy ridge beam. To enlarge the family room and kids' bedrooms, their walls were just pushed deeper into the master bedroom's original space.
Moving walls
Lesnett pushed out the study's exterior wall three feet in the first remodeling phase. The post marks where the end wall originally stood.
A new kitchen
As time brought changes in Lesnett's life—the kids grew up and moved away, Shirley died, and he married his second wife, Elsa—the house changed with him. In 1995, he remodeled the kitchen, breaking through a closet and widening the existing bumpout to create a new, fully loaded laundry room addition.
[Thinking of remodeling your kitchen? Click to find the right contractor now.]
Teak cabinetry in the open kitchen blends in with the house's other natural materials—quarry tile flooring, Douglas fir posts, and unstained cedar walls and ceilings.
Wall of windows
Walls of plate glass in the living room blur the line between indoor and out. Boulders used to landscape are the same ones Lesnett removed from a hill to clear the lot, a process that took two years. "The area was so pretty that I wanted everyone to be able to take advantage of the view from wherever they stood," he says. "It's like you're under cover but also outdoors." That feeling of never really being enclosed fools visitors into thinking the house is much wider than its actual 17 feet.
In all, Lesnett expanded his house from its original 2,450 square feet in the 1950s to 3,200 today, largely with his own hands. And although it all appears very polished, he says he did everything on a shoestring—$70,000 total, including labor and materials. That just goes to show what you can do when you have a house built to assist in its own remodeling.


text: NOTE: When working with rational equations, it may be difficult to "see" the intersection point if the viewing window is a small representation of the graph. You may want to enlarge the viewing window by adjusting the WINDOW settings or by using ZOOM (#2 Zoom In). Remember, when using Zoom In, hitting ENTER the first time only registers the function. You must hit ENTER a second time to activate the Zoom In option. You can quickly return to the 10 x 10 viewing window by pressing ZOOM (#6 ZStandard). Remember: In Example 2, you can see that there is only one answer to the equation since there is only one point of intersection. Should there be NO points of intersection, the answer will be the empty set.


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HARRISBURG, Pa. — Football coach Joe Paterno and other Penn State officials didn't do enough to try to stop suspected sexual abuse of children at the hands of a former assistant football coach, the state police commissioner said Monday.
Paterno may have fulfilled his legal requirement to report suspected abuse by former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, state police Commissioner Frank Noonan said, "but somebody has to question about what I would consider the moral requirements for a human being that knows of sexual things that are taking place with a child."
He added: "I think you have the moral responsibility, anyone. Not whether you're a football coach or a university president or the guy sweeping the building. I think you have a moral responsibility to call us."
Paterno, who recently became the coach with the most wins in Division I football history, wasn't charged and the grand jury report didn't appear to implicate him in wrongdoing. He has called the criminal charges shocking and troubling.
"If this is true we were all fooled, along with scores of professionals trained in such things, and we grieve for the victims and their families," he said in a statement Sunday.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly said Paterno is not a target of the investigation into how the school handled the accusations. But she refused to say the same for university President Graham Spanier.
"All I can say is again, I'm limited to what's contained in the presentment, and that this is an ongoing investigation," Kelly said.
Noonan said the case went beyond football and the university.
"It is a case about children who have had their innocence stolen from them, in a culture that did nothing to stop it or prevent it from happening to others," he said.
Also Monday, two Penn State officials surrendered on charges that they failed to alert police to complaints that Sandusky had sexually abused eight boys. They are also charged with lying to a state grand jury investigating the former defensive coordinator.
Senior Vice President Gary Schultz and Athletic Director Tim Curley both stepped down from their posts late Sunday, one day after the charges were announced.
On Monday, they appeared in a Harrisburg courtroom, where a judge set bail at $75,000. They weren't required to enter pleas but they had to surrender their passports.
Schultz, 62, and Curley, 57, are innocent and will seek to have the charges dismissed, their lawyers said.
Kelly and Noonan encouraged anyone who would accuse Sandusky of sexual assault to step forward and talk to police, with Kelly specifically asking that a child reportedly assaulted in view of a graduate student in 2002 to call detectives.
When asked if it was possible that there were more victims, she said: "When you look at the totality of the circumstances and the number of victims that we have, I don't think it would be beyond the realm of possibility that there are other victims that exist here."
Sandusky sexually abused eight boys over 15 years through his charity for at-risk youth, authorities charged.
Once considered Paterno's heir apparent, Sandusky retired in 1999 but continued to use the school's facilities for his work with The Second Mile, a foundation he established to help at-risk kids.
The allegations against Sandusky, who started The Second Mile in 1977, range from sexual advances to touching to oral and anal sex. The young men testified before the state grand jury that they were in their early teens when some of the abuse occurred; there is evidence even younger children may have been victimized.
Sandusky's attorney Joe Amendola said his client has been aware of the accusations for about three years and has maintained his innocence.
The grand jury report that lays out the accusations against the three men cites the state's Child Protective Services Law, which requires immediate reporting by doctors, nurses, school administrators, teachers, day care workers, police and others.
It appears neither Schultz nor Curley had direct contact with the boys Sandusky is accused of abusing.
Spanier, Penn State's president, called the allegations "troubling" but predicted the school officials would be exonerated.
Kelly, the attorney general, said Penn State officials never made any attempt to identify the child that the grad assistant saw in the showers with Sandusky in 2002.
"Today as we stand here, we encourage that person who is now likely to be a young adult to contact investigators from the attorney general's office," she said. "This is an ongoing and active investigation."


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BEIRUT - Syria's prime minister defected on Monday, evidence that the widening cracks in President Bashar's Assad's regime have reached the highest echelons of government.
Riad Hijab — who planned the break for months, according to an aide — is the highest-level political figure to switch sides and is certain to encourage rebels after a string of military and diplomatic figures abandoned the regime. A Jordanian official and a rebel spokesman said he fled to Jordan.
Ahmad Kassim, a senior official with the Free Syrian Army, initially said Hijab defected along with three other ministers but later said only two other ministers had left. There has been no confirmation, however, from Syria or any other source on other ministers defecting.
A senior U.S. official said the defection is more evidence that the Assad regime "is crumbling." The official, travelling with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Johannesburg, urged other senior members of the government and military to break with Assad.
The Syrian regime has suffered a series of significant setbacks over the past month that point to a loosening of its grip on the country.
Four of the president's top security aides were killed in a rebel bombing of state security headquarters in the capital Damascus on July 18, including the defence minister and Assad's brother in law. There has been a steady stream of high-level defections from diplomats to generals. And the regime has been unable to fully subdue rebel challenges in the two major cities, Damascus and Aleppo.
But power remains closely held within Assad's inner circle and even posts such as the prime minister have limited clout. Because he is not part of that elite, Hijab's departure will not immediately undercut the regime's ability to fight rebels in places such as Aleppo, Syria's largest city, which has been pounded by gunners and warplanes.
Still such defections carry symbolic importance and highlight that dissent reaches into the upper levels of government even though they still have not cracked the pillars of Assad's rule that include the military and his minority Alawite community.
Hijab is part of Syria's Sunni majority, which forms the bedrock of the opposition in the 17-month-uprising that has claimed at least 19,000 lives.
Just hours before word of the defection got out, Assad suffered another blow in his attempt to portray he is in control: A bomb ripped through the third floor of the state TV building in Damascus, wounding at least three employees and displaying the ability of rebels to strike in the heart of the capital.
Mohammad Otari, Hijab's spokesman, told The Associated Press in Amman, Jordan that the minister was appointed about two months ago and started planning his defection at that time. He said Hijab rebels from the Free Syrian Army at least two months ago to help him escape, which they did.
"The criminal Assad pressed him to become a prime minister and left him no choice but to accept the position. He had told him: 'You either accept the position or get killed,'" said Otari, who told the AP that Hijab and his family planned to travel on from Amman to Qatar, one of the main state backers of the rebels.
"The prime minister defected from the regime of killing, maiming and terrorism. He considers himself a soldier in the revolution," the aide said.
Otari said Hijab, who hails from Syria's eastern province of Deir el-Zour, was in a "safe place" along with his family and seven brothers, including two who held top government posts at the ministries of oil and environment. He did not say where they were.
A former agriculture minister, Hijab was considered a loyalist in Assad's ruling Baath party.
A Jordanian government official confirmed Hijab defected with his family, but did not comment on whether other ministers had also come. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he was not allowed to make any public statements on the defection.
Jordan's Information Minister Sameeh Maaytah's denied that Hijab had "defected" to Jordan, but the statement appears to reflect the kingdom's concern over further angering its more powerful neighbour. Jordan is already giving refuge to 140,000 Syria refugees.
The other ministers' identities were not immediately known and Syrian TV denied reports that Finance Minister Mohammad Jlailati had defected or been jailed.
The Syrian opposition celebrated Hijab's defection and saluted his bravery. George Sabra, a spokesman for the opposition Syrian National Council, said Hijab is a symbol of the state and added that he expected his desertion to usher in a chain of others.
"He has finally discovered that this regime is an enemy of its own people and is destined to fall, and he chose to join the ranks of those who defected before him," Sabra told AP. "This will trigger a chain of other defections by Syrian senior government and security officials," he added. "The Syrian regime is drowning and this is the clearest sign yet."
Clinton plans to stop in Turkey for meetings on Syria on Saturday. The blasts at the state TV offices raised issues likely to be part of her talks: The apparent ability the rebels to strike key sites in Damascus and the regime's increasing finger-pointing at countries that have sided with the opposition.
Ahmad Abdullah, a Turkey-based member of the Free Syrian Army rebel group, said the state TV station that was attacked "broadcasts government propaganda and this makes it a target for the rebels."
A pro-government private Syrian TV station, Al-Ikhbariya, broadcast images of the damage at the state TV building. The footage showed destroyed walls, overturned desks, blown-out cabinet doors, broken glass and dangling electricity cables. A few TV workers were shown tending to a wounded colleague.
Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi blamed Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Israel for the attack. Syrian authorities accuse the Gulf countries and Israel of supporting the rebels.
"Nothing can silence the voice of Syria or the voice of the Syrian people," al-Zoubi said while inspecting the damage at the TV building. "We have a thousand locations to broadcast from."
Syria's rebels have grown increasingly bold and capable in recent months. In July, the rebels and Syrian regime forces fought intense battles for a week in Damascus in what was the opposition fighters' biggest challenge so far in the capital.
The government claimed Saturday it was now in full control of all districts in the capital, after purging one of the last rebel-held areas, but clashes have continued in some districts.
In a brazen daylight attack, rebels commandeered a bus and snatched 48 Iranians just outside Damascus Saturday. Iran said those abducted were pilgrims who were visiting a shrine about 10 miles (six kilometres) south of Damascus and were on their way to the airport to return home.
But the captors claimed in a video broadcast Sunday that one of the captives was an officer of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards and that the 48 were on a "reconnaissance mission" in the capital.
Mainly Shiite Iran is a close ally of the beleaguered Syrian government, which is dominated by the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
Halaby reported from Amman, Jordan. AP writers Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, a Bassem Mroue in Hatay, Turkey, contributed to this report.


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Thomas Corrie, Isabelle Laliberté, James Hobbs and Jhih-Ren Shih |
- James Hobbs - author of Sketch Your World
- Thomas Corrie
- Isabelle Laliberté
- Zhenia Vasiliev
- Jhih-Ren Shih
- and me!
There's going to be a private view sometime very soon for those in London who follow my sketches and those of other urban sketchers - I'll let you know the date as soon as it's confirmed.
In the meantime here's my pics of some of the work
Thomas Corrie produces some stunning pen and ink drawings of architectural features which take his fancy.
I am an architect and I draw to help me see and understand buildings and cities. Every year I take part in 28 Drawings Later, a challenge to draw something for every day in February. To keep focused I decided to use entrances as a theme for my sketches and I travelled to every location on my bicycle, usually in the morning before starting work. I sought out places I had not previously visited as well as going to some familiar sights.
Thomas Corrie with his drawings produced using pigment ink liners in a 200mm sketchbook |
I started sketching around five years ago. I saw a book talk about the urban sketch that evokes me to depicting my daily life. As a foreigner from Taiwan, I'm very exciting when I came to London, the exotic atmosphere intrigue me to drawing more and more sketches here. I like to explore to city with my sketches, especially when I found some scenes interesting or special. It not only just record my daily life in UK, also help me to communicate with the places I been to.
Works by Isabelle Laliberté |
I have always drawn and painted a little, but joining Urban Sketchers in 2008 really freed my practice. Sketching allows me to have richer memories of my travels. Unlike a photograph, which is done in an instant, a sketch allows me to absorb more 'meta-data': the weather, the sounds, the smells, the light and the people are all embedded into a sketch. As an architect, I have a natural tendency to draw the built environment - not only do I love buildings, but they tend not to move around so much...James Hobbs is the ex-Editor of Artists & Illustrators, the current Editor of Discover Art and the author or Sketch Your World - which has now been published in the UK, USA and Asia.
Drawing in a sketchbook can change your view of the world. I usually carry an A6 and A5 sketchbook around with me, along with a small selection of permanent marker pens. The urban landscape, particularly that of my adopted home of London, is for me an endlessly diverting and energising subject. I sometimes use these drawings to make colour digital prints, which I sell in limited editions.Zhenia Vasiliev and Naomi Hobbs were a fabulous support in hanging my work. (I fall over too easily these days!). Unfortunately my photograph of his work is too bad to show.
For me, as both a graphic designer and illustrator, artistic practice is about a process of thinking rather than producing a finished piece. I love to think about the visual appearance of things - and drawing helps me with this, so sketching is a big part of my profession
my sketches of Syon Vista and Syon Reach |


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My collection of lipsticks! From the darkest shade to the lightest (the Sephora honey on the furthest right is a new purchase and I must say I'm really loving nude lips). I wear the Revlon Persian Melon super pink lipstick almost all the time, it cost next to nothing and it's by far my favourite go to. I'm curious to know what are your favourite lipstick color and brand!
My collection of lipgloss tends to be super girlish pink, I think they're the best color for lipgloss. Especially when they come in shades that looks yummy and edible too.
I must admit I was more impressed with the Sephora lipstick wand packing than the colors themselves, but I haven't try out all the colors yet. So the process of trying out each color should be quite fun in itself!
These two items are some new addition to my makeup collection and I truly love them to bits. Posie tint gives such a beautiful pink blush to my cheeks and the Porefessional does its job really really well in minimizing the appearance of pores. So I'm really glad I got them the other day.
These are the other blushers I have that I've neglected a little after I got the posie tint. Still those Stila blush pots are wonderful products and I can't believe such tiny pots had lasted me for years! And I use them almost everyday too.
What I slapped onto my face every morning! Other than that, I only use some really inexpensive Maybelline pressed powder to do the job.
Eyeliner is such an important part of my makeup routine. It does wonders to open up one's eyes and my favourite would have to be the Canmake pencil liner, its gives a really thick creamy effect that I just adore.
My favourite mascara is actually the giant Kiko mascara that I bought during my trip to Paris last year. It was really really cheap and I've never heard of the brand before but it beats the rest of the mascaras I have here.
I tried and I tried to get my hands on the Urban Decay Naked/ Naked 2 Pallete in Sephora but no such luck till today! So I settled for their Book of Shadows IV which is pretty neat but I hope I get to a Naked pallete one fine day soon! My favourite eyeshadow colors are the midnight rodeo and midnight cowgirl, they're so shimmery and glittery:)
♥ Sephora Oh my Cherie Nail Polish Collection
I got this collection this month and have only tried out the pink color, can't wait to try out the other 4. It took me about 1-2 coats to get a really matte shade, so I'm pretty pleased with this buy too.
Some other beauty items that I've sworn by this past month! I've got nothing but raving reviews for each of them!


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Food fight - McDonald's employee headbutts customer after row over chicken nuggets
The 26-second footage, shows the unnamed male employee, who appears to be in his early 20's, grabbing a customer before headbutting him.
The video was captured at around 4.50am this morning as the regular menu turned to breakfast at the outlet.
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Hide AdA source who captured the video said: "The fight broke out because the menu was turning to breakfast and they didn't have any chicken nuggets.
"Instead he wanted bacon but they didn't have any bacon either."
During the scuffle in Liverpool, Merseyside, the employee, who has now been suspended, brutally headbutts the man who defends himself by attempting to punch him, missing his face and instead knocking off the man's glasses.
Another female customer, who appears to be in her early 20's - tried to pull the pair off and shouted "it's a f***ing joke" before the video cuts off.
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdA source said: "The staff member in question was behind the counter and took a disliking to the customer.
"He had to take at least a 20 second walk around the counter to come face to face with the customer and that's when the altercation took place."
"There was no security in sight and the guy was covered in blood.
"Me and my friends were left shaken by the event and when asked McDonald's staff what they were going to do about it they said nothing was going to be done."
A McDonald's spokesperson said: "We take matters like this extremely seriously and can confirm the individual has been suspended; an internal investigation is taking place as a matter of urgency."


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When the choice is between exalting God or exalting man, Satan is pro-man. When the choice is between exalting Satan or exalting man, Satan is pro-Satan. Here are the texts.
1. In Mark 8 Jesus told his disciples he must suffer. Peter rebuked Jesus! Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man" (Mark 8:33).
So what Satan was standing up for in the mouth of Peter was "the things of man." He was very pro-man at that point. Beware that not all philosophies and social movements that talk up man are really good for man.
2. In John 8 Jesus said the devil "was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies" (John 8:44).
A person lies and kills to get his way without concern for the good of others. Satan is a liar and murderer because he is totally self-centered. So he cares nothing for man (John 10:13), except where man's prosperity can draw him away from God.
Is Satan pro-man? Yes, when it serves his God-belittling, self-exalting purposes. But in the process of standing with man he leads him to destruction.


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Sony confirms launch for 'PS3 Arc'
We'll be waggling our wands come autumn
Sony has confirmed PlayStation 3 motion control will be launching later this autumn, with some gamers disappointed that the rumoured-to-be-called 'PS3 Arc' will not make a spring/Easter launch.
The launch of Sony's new motion controller coincides with the planned launch of Microsoft's Project Natal motion control tech, so it is already shaping up to be an interesting Christmas in 2010 (or, if you work in the games industry, an 'interesting Q4').
Sony promises an "extensive line-up" of motion-controlled games to coincide with the launch.
Hirai on Motion
"We have decided to release the Motion Controller in fall 2010 when we will be able to offer an exciting and varied line-up of software titles that will deliver the new entertainment experience to PS3 users," said Kaz Hirai, President and Group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment.
Hirai added: "We will continue to work to have a comprehensive portfolio of attractive and innovative games for the Motion Controller, not only from SCE Worldwide Studios but also from the third-party developers and publishers, whom we have been working closely with.
"We look forward to soon unveiling the exciting software line-up that further expand and define the PS3 platform as the ultimate entertainment system for the home."
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By David Nield


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With the Olympics on there are a lot of really great camera shots shown during the events. One of the best is the overhead view, which is provided by a camera suspended between cables. It's not new for the Olympics, SkyCam has been around for over twenty years. What is new is [Dan Royer's] attempts to build his own aerial camera setup.
He's not starting from zero with this project. [Dan] has done some really great work with the Drawbot. It's a two-motor, two-axis plotter which uses CNC to draw on a white board. For this project he combined two Drawbots in order to add a third axis. The image above shows the camera mount suspended between the four strings. He's been working hard on getting the software ready for this kind of addressing. Along the way he broke the strings a few times because he was too far from the kill switch to stop it in time. But what he's got is a nice start and we hope to see a more illustrative follow-up soon.
One of the things that SkyCam has going for it is a stabilization system. We wonder if a spinning gyroscope would work as well as it did for that balancing bike.


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Hey all, some great news on the asian tokyo gore titles that were created under the typhoon sushi studio. We've been hearing about these for months, so of course we are more than anxious for their arrival. The latest PR below means sooner than later. Stay tuned as we have a special article coming tomorrow on the Tokyo Gore genre!
Well Go USA has acquired DVD, Digital, VOD and Television rights for the North American market to Mutant Girls Squad, Helldriver, Yakuza Weapon,
Deadball and Karate-Robo Zaborgar from Nikkatsu Corporation's leading genre film label, The Sushi Typhoon. Launched in 2010, The Sushi Typhoon was created by Producer Yoshinori Chiba and aims to bring the best talent from Japanese cult cinema to worldwide audiences. Well Go plans to make its initial roll out on VOD, DVD and Blu-ray starting in Fall 2011.
"We are very excited to have secured rights to these 'neo action gore' titles, a genre which has seen tremendous growth here in the U.S. and has such passionate and dedicated fans," said Doris Pfardrescher, President Well Go USA Entertainment. "We continue to look for interesting and compelling product from Asia to introduce to the North American market."
"Nikkatsu Corporation is so delighted to have built up a solid business tie with Well Go USA to release The Sushi Typhoon titles in the U.S. market," said Akifumi Sugihara, Executive Producer of The Sushi Typhoon, "We are more than certain that our strongest partner Well Go USA will leave no stone unturned through all media to deliver our product to those consumers who are so covetous of powerful and highly thrilling entertainment."
Karate-Robo Zaborgar and Yakuza Weapon recently screened at the New York Asian Film Festival and will next be screened at Montreal's Fantasia International Film Festival, the Puchon Fantastic Film Festival in South Korea, and events around the world throughout the summer and fall.
Karate-Robo Zaborgar, written and directed by Noboru Iguchi, stars Itsuji Itao, Yasuhisa Furuhara and Akira Emoto. Karate-Robo Zaborgar is a hilariously over-the-top tribute to the transforming robots of 1970's Japanese television, and an exciting action/comedy that will stir the heart of anyone who longs for justice dispensed at the short end of a swift robot karate kick! The film had its World Premiere at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.
Yakuza Weapon, co-directed by Tak Sakaguchi and Yudai Yamaguchi, is a wild combination of hard-boiled gangster action, manga-style comedy and splatterific special effects. The film stars Tak Sakaguchi, Shingo Tsurumi, Mei Kurokawa, Akaji Maro and Jun Murakami.
Helldriver, written, character designed, edited and directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura, is an epic, apocalyptic road movie featuring non-stop action and over-the-top splatter. Starring Yumiko Hara, Eihi Shiina, Kazuki Namioka, Yurei Yanagi, Minoru Torihada and Guadalcanal Taka, Helldriver is Nishimura's bid to create the ultimate zombie film. It had its World Premiere at Fantastic Fest in Austin and is scheduled to be released on DVD and Blu-ray in early November 2011.
Mutant Girls Squad was directed by Noboru Iguchi, Yoshihiro Nishimura and Tak Sakaguchi, who have joined forces to bring three times the heart-pounding action, three times the jaw-dropping comedy and three times the head-exploding splatter of your average action/horror/comedy! It's a three-times-larger Mutant Action Extravaganza starring Yumi Sugimoto, Yuko Takayama, Suzuka Morita, and Naoto Takenaka.
The hilariously offensive, politically incorrect sports splatter comedy, Deadball is director Yudai Yamaguchi's follow-up to his earlier zombie baseball classic Battlefield Baseball, and once again features action star Tak Sakaguchi, along with Mari Hoshino, Mickey Curtis, Koichi Yamadera and Ryosei Tayama. A riotous, over-the-top epic of excess, Deadball is the movie for the psycho sports fan in all of us. The film received its World Premiere on July 15, 2011 at Fantasia International Film Festival.


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Blues celebrate their first Stanley Cup with a parade for the ages
St. Louis Blues goaltender Jordan Binnington celebrates with fans during the NHL hockey Stanley Cup victory celebration, Saturday, June 15, 2019, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Scott Kane)
ST. LOUIS — After a half-century of disappointment, even Mother Nature didn't dare spoil the celebration of St. Louis' first-ever Stanley Cup championship.
A morning downpour fizzled to a light rain by the time the parade began Saturday, and the sun popped out just as a rally was starting before a massive crowd on the grounds of the Gateway Arch.
The Blues ended one of sports' longest championship droughts on Wednesday by beating the Boston Bruins 4-1 in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, the first title for a franchise that joined the NHL 52 years ago. Fans poured into the city for the celebration. There were no immediate crowd estimates, but local leaders' expectations of at least a half-million people appeared to be spot on.
The long-awaited championship stirred strong emotions in St. Louis, a city still smarting from the departure of the NFL's Rams in 2016. The loss of the football team seemed to strengthen the fans' bonds to the Blues and their beloved baseball team, the Cardinals.
"I'm so happy for the city and the fans here," coach Craig Berube said at the rally. "They deserve it. But more than anything I'm so happy for our players, because of how hard they've played, the character and leadership coming through, winning that cup."
Ryan Korte, a 56-year-old letter carrier from the St. Louis suburb of Belleville, Illinois, said he wasn't sure he'd ever get to see the Blues win the cup.
"I was starting to wonder," Korte said as he waved a towel while standing on a ledge, straining to see the parade. "A lot of disappointments. They've had some good teams and they always let us down."
Not this time.
"This is bigger than the World Series," Korte said.
Ladies and gentlemen, your Stanley Cup champion St. Louis Blues! #stlblues pic.twitter.com/0IQAigP5vM
— FOX Sports Midwest (@FSMidwest) June 15, 2019
That may sound strange in St. Louis, which has long been considered a baseball haven thanks to the Cardinals' 11 World Series titles. It sure looked like a hockey town on Saturday, though, as fans shouted "Let's Go Blues!" and danced to "Gloria," the 1982 Laura Branigan hit that became the Blues' unofficial victory song.
Forward Ryan O'Reilly, who won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of this year's playoffs, carried the Stanley Cup to fans lining Market Street to let them touch it.
"The Blues have an amazing fan base," said Michael DeHeer, 52, of St. Louis. "This place is ready to explode."
It has been quite a journey since the Blues joined the NHL in 1967 as one of six expansion teams that year that doubled the size of the league. The original six teams were kept in one division, the six new teams in another, ensuring that an expansion team would play for the Stanley Cup.
The Blues loaded their roster with aging veterans and it paid off: They played for the Stanley Cup in each of their first three seasons. They didn't win a game, though, going a combined 0-12 in those three series.
What followed was a 49-year stretch in which the Blues didn't make the finals — a drought made even more remarkable because the team only missed the playoffs nine times during that span.
This year's season didn't start out promising, as a sluggish start got coach Mike Yeo fired in November.
Berube took over as interim coach — a title he still holds, though the interim tag is expected to be lifted soon. Improvement didn't come immediately — the Blues were dead last in the standings on Jan. 3, the middle of the season. Days later, an unheralded rookie goaltender named Jordan Binnington was called up. He won his first game in a shutout.
Soon, with Binnington taking over as the lead goalie, the Blues went on a franchise-record 11-game winning streak and stayed hot through their playoff run.
Binnington, known for his calm demeanor, finally let loose Saturday.
"You want to see some (expletive) emotion?" he asked the rally crowd. "We're Stanley Cup champions, baby!"
The Blues joined a list of other sports franchises to recently end long championship droughts. The Chicago Cubs' win in the 2016 World Series ended a 108-year run of futility. The Philadelphia Eagles won the 2018 Super Bowl, their first championship in 58 years. Last year's Stanley Cup winners, the Washington Capitals, won for the first time since joining the NHL in 1974.


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In the summer of 1996, I remember a conversation with then-defensive end Trace Armstrong that applies to some Dolphins players today.
Armstrong came to the Dolphins in 1995 because Don Shula was eager to improve the team's pass rush. But then Shula blitzed toward retirement after '95 and Jimmy Johnson was hired within the span of two weeks.
And Jimmy Johnson brought his guys with him. Johnson signed defensive end Dan Stubbs, drafted Shane Burton and even made initial plans to use Daryl Gardener as a defensive end on some passing downs. Armstrong, Shula's hire, realized he was suddenly an endangered species -- the last coach's player.
"Things have changed around here for guys like me," Armstrong said of himself and other Shula holdovers. "And not for the better. We've got to be better than the new guy's boys just to stay even."
Armstrong did more than stay even. He led the team in sacks in 1996, and '97, and '98, and 2000. But his point about survival on a new coach's roster is relevant today, even as the players not drafted or signed by Big Tuna Bill Parcells and Tuna Helper Jeff Ireland continue to dwindle in numbers.
A couple of days ago the Dolphins released quarterback John Beck, the sixth player from Randy Mueller's 2007 draft class that was either cut or traded by the new regime. The survivors remaining players from that class are first-rounder Ted Ginn Jr., fourth-rounder Paul Soliai and punter Brandon Fields, a seventh-rounder.
The 2005 and 2006 draft classes, authored by Nick Saban, have been similarly decimated. Cameron banished Fred Evans and Kevin Vickerson, while the current regime has cut or traded Travis Daniels, Derek Hagan, Anthony Alabi, and Joe Toledo. The survivors remaining players from those classes are Ronnie Brown, Matt Roth, Channing Crowder, Jason Allen and Rodrique Wright.
Guess what?
All those players, with the possible exception of Channing Crowder, are endangered in one regard or another.
I would tell you the guy who should be most worried about his spot on the roster between now and the start of training camp is Jason Allen. This coaching staff appreciates his special teams work -- some anyway.
But as a cornerback? Not so much. And as a safety? Not at all.
The Dolphins 2006 first-round draft pick has frustrated Miami coaches in that he is tutored and coached and told how to do things. And then in time of crisis and pressure, when he needs the techniques taught to him the most, he reverts to instincts and techniques he learned years ago. And those things do not serve him well, aside from the fact they frustrate the current regime.
Allen should notice the Dolphins drafted two cornerbacks -- Vontae Davis and Sean Smith -- last weekend. They also signed Eric Green before that. Those three are this regime's guys. Allen is not. He has a bull's eye on his back. He is endangered on this roster.
Matt Roth? The Dolphins signed Cameron Wake this offseason and are currently negotiating with Jason Taylor, as are at least two other teams. (Yes, that is breaking news but we kind of assumed that would be the case anyway). The point is Roth's job as a strongside OLB is not secure in the least.
Ronnie Brown? The Dolphins entertained trade talks for the running back prior to the draft. His wildcat package role will likely go to Pat White because White is expected to be a more accomplished thrower and the fact is teams stuffed the Wildcat last year with constant blitzes, which can only be stopped with passes over the top of the defense that forces the D to respect the back end. Brown will be on the team this year -- I expect -- but he's on notice he has to play well to be on the team beyond that.
Ted Ginn Jr.? It should not escape his attention the Dolphins counted wide receiver a need position this offseason and drafted two receivers that, if plans work out, will be in the mix for red zone snaps, because of their size and quickness (both of which Ginn lacks). Yes, he's fast, but I don't believe anyone would argue he's either big or quick. The point is 2009 must be Ginn's breakout year. If he doesn't do it in 2009, under the same offensive system, playing with a veteran quarterback he knows, and given the staff's creativity, he'll have no excuse for not succeeding.
Brandon Fields? Bill Parcells thought him to be a core player before last season. But then Fields was only middle-of-the-road in gross average at 43.9 yards and his net average of 35.5 was 25th of 32 -- which is, frankly, not good. So the Dolphins signed an Australian tryout Jy Bond, who has never played in any college. Fields has to watch his Ps and Qs and win a punting competition this summer whereas last summer the Dolphins had no punter in camp competing with him.
Paul Soliai? Size is this guy's saving grace. He is bigger and stronger than commercial refrigerators. But he must hold off the challenge of offseason acquisitions Tony McDaniel and Joe Cohen. His spot is not guaranteed by any means. He has to grow up and produce or, or, well, or else.
Rodrigue Wright? He had so much potential coming out of Texas. It has not yet translated to the NFL and Lionel Dotson, who the current regime drafted last year in the seventh round, has already passed him even before minicamps begin.
So you tell me ... of all these endangered players, which is most likely to become extinct in Miami?
[BLOG NOTE: I want to thank all of you who shared time with me on the live blogs Saturday and Sunday. This blog had 141,108 page views for those two days. You guys rock! Thank you.]


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Stop All That Grinding!!
Maybe you live with a spouse or a child who grinds their teeth while sleeping, and now you just view this as "normal." While it may seem "normal" to you because you've gotten used to hearing all that grinding, it's really not "normal" and it can cause a lot of harm to the teeth and jaws of the grinder.
However, the good news is – there is something you can do to prevent nocturnal (night) grinding and the damage it causes and those of us at Delroy Park Dental Care are here to help you.
If you are concerned about a loved one's teeth grinding, or a loved one is concerned about yours, give us a call and we will be happy to discuss affordable solutions with you!
What Causes Teeth Grinding?
Teeth grinding, also known as bruxism, occurs most often while sleeping, when a person slides their upper and lower teeth back and forth over each other. Some people also grind their teeth in the daytime, usually because of a misalignment between their top and bottom teeth.
No one really knows why people grind their teeth, but stress, underlying anger issues, and anxiety are considered the most likely causes in adults. In children, teeth grinding may have more to do with how their teeth are erupting and the fact that their top and bottom teeth don't fit together well. However, they may also grind as a reaction to teething or earache pain or because of stress.
Does Grinding Damage Teeth?
Not only can grinding damage your teeth by cracking or chipping them or wearing them down, it can also affect your jaw and cause facial and headache pain. Not a very pleasant list now, is it? And, if you have had any kind of reconstructive, cosmetic or restorative procedures done, such as bonding or crowns, you risk causing significant damage to a hefty investment you may have already made in your teeth!
Night Guards Can Help
Our team can fit you with a special mouth guard to wear while sleeping. A night guard is made by taking impressions of your upper and lower teeth, using a special mold. The impressions are used to make the mouth guard so that it fits perfectly to the shape of your teeth. The night guard doesn't stop the grinding, it just makes sure that it doesn't affect your teeth!
If grinding is a problem for you or a loved one, Delroy Park Dental Care has the solution. Please call our clinic for an appointment to be evaluated and fitted for a night guard. Don't let teeth grinding become a bigger pain than it already is!


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- Feature Links
- About Us
About Us
"Inspiring Conservation of the Natural World."
A Community Treasure
Sunset Zoological Park, founded in 1933 by the Manhattan Parks and Recreation Board, has been a cultural and education asset to the community for over 80 years. Dr. EJ Frick, Zoo founder and former head of surgery and medicine at the Kansas State University School of Veterinary Medicine, volunteered to acquire, provide care for and display animals for 43 years.
The city obtained much of its original funding from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) for initial construction of animal exhibits, buildings and walkways. Much of this original native limestone work has been preserved, serving as educational examples of zoo and social history, and remains part of the zoo's Master Plan.
Modernizing the Zoo
In 1980, citizens of Manhattan encouraged the City Commission to build a modern zoo. This led to the development of a Zoo Master Plan, and city approval to charge a small admission fee. All revenue generated from admissions is used for on-going zoo improvements and maintenance. This additional source of income allowed Sunset Zoo to increase its level of commitment to animal care, education and conservation. Sunset Zoo applied for, and received, accreditation by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA) in 1989. The Zoo has maintained commitment to upholding those high standards, and has been reaccredited every five years since.
Current Operations
Today, Sunset Zoo operates in 26 of it's 48 available acres. Employing nearly 20 full-time employees and a variety of part-time and seasonal staff, the Zoo is open seven days a week, 360 days a year. Zoo operations are overseen by a range of departments including Administration, Animal Care, Education, Guest Services, Horticulture/Maintenance and Marketing/Development. In addition to funding from the City of Manhattan, Sunset is supported by two 501c3 not-for-profit organizations: the Friends of Sunset Zoo and the Sunset Zoological Park and Wildlife Conservation Trust.
In 2022, the Zoo opened Expedition Asia, featuring Malayan Tigers, Sloth Bears and Amur Leopards. Community members can also learn more about the Sunset Zoo's future by viewing the Mater Plan.


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(visited by Joseph Kerski and Bob Coulter)
20-Jan-2004 -- I, Joseph Kerski, Geographer from the US Geological Survey in Colorado USA, and Bob Coulter, Education Specialist from the Missouri Botanical Garden in Missouri USA, visited Latitude 33 degrees North, Longitude 97 degrees West on a midwinter's day in North Texas. An hour earlier, Bob and I had landed at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, arriving in the area for the 16th annual GeoTech Conference. As the conference's focus was on the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and GPS in the educational curriculum, a confluence visit seemed the perfect way to begin a week of working to excite teachers about working with geographic information.
We departed the DFW Airport by 1245pm local time, driving northeast along Texas State Highway 121, crossing the county line from Dallas to Denton. The most difficult part about reaching the confluence was making a left turn into the office park. We finally were able to turn left on Corporate Drive off of Highway 121, then left on Edmonds, and left into the Convergence Office Center. It is interesting to note how confluence access can change over time. This office park was formerly gated, thwarting the first visitor's attempt in 1998, but by 2000, the Raytheon complex was in the process of converting to a standard office park. This allowed the successive visitors, including us, to reach the spot. By 140pm, we had arrived at the correct parking lot, and walked about 40 meters due east to the spot. I immediately recognized the north end of the building with its distinctive columned side from the previous visitor.
The confluence lies in a fairly newly developed area of suburban northern Dallas. The homes we had passed on our circuit were townhomes and single-family homes largely of brick. The oldest buildings in the area were definitely the office buildings of the Convergence Office Center, where the confluence lies. While care has gone into resurfacing several of the parking lots, and much open space exists, the whole complex has a depressing air of 1960s decay. Nevertheless, we were quite excited, as this was my 30th confluence visit, my first of 2004, and Bob's first confluence visit. The ground cover at the confluence was planted short grass. The air temperature was a mild 50 F with little wind. We passed a police team holding a meeting in the first parking lot, but everyone else was inside the buildings. We saw no animals or birds, but the sky was full of airplanes preparing to land at the airport.
As we neared the building, the GPS had difficulty zeroing in on the spot, but numerous GPS satellites in the southern sky at the time helped ensure success. After taking a few photographs, a security staffperson drove up in a golf cart. We told him about our mission, and he let us continue. We filmed the movie, gazed once more at the surroundings, and after spending a half hour at the site, walked back to the vehicle just after 2pm. Before leaving the office park, Bob took a photograph of me at the Convergence sign. I then sprang my idea of visiting 34 North 97 West on Bob, who fortunately was agreeable. In fact, he had spotted my maps of the next confluence while navigating us to the current one, and so had already anticipated my request.


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Rabbit Finance
How to Buy Rabbit Finance (RABBIT)
Step 1: Download a Crypto Wallet.
There are many crypto wallets available. It would be best if you chose the most well-integrated based on your region, payment method and policy. You can download Google Chrome and the wallet Chrome extension using a desktop computer. If the wallet's mobile app is available, you can download it from the iOS App Store or Google Play if you prefer using your smartphone.
Step 2: Set up your Wallet.
Using the Google Chrome extension for the wallet or the mobile app you downloaded in Step 1 to register and set up the cryptocurrency wallet. You can use the support page for the wallet as a resource. Make a note of your wallet address and keep your seed phrase secure. Later, when you are on Steps 4 and 6, you will need it.
Step 3: Buy your base currency.
You can purchase the base currency after setting up your wallet by logging into your Exchange account and going to the Buy & Sell Crypto page. If you have never used a crypto Exchange before, you can read their tutorials to learn how to sign up and purchase your first coin.
Step 4: Send your base currency to your Crypto Wallet.
Once you buy your base currency, go to your wallet section and look for the coin you purchased. Click on withdraw and fill in the required information.
Choose the proper network, and provide your wallet address and the amount you want to transfer.
Click the withdraw button and wait for your base currency to appear in your wallet.
Step 5: Choose a Decentralized Exchange (DEX).
There are several DEXs available; you only need to confirm that the exchange supports the wallet you choose in
Step 2. For instance, you can go to Pancake Swap to
complete the transaction if you are using the Binance wallet.
Step 6: Connect your Wallet and Trade your base currency with Rabbit Finance (RABBIT).
Using the wallet address from Step 2, connect your wallet to the DEX you want to utilize. Choose Rabbit Finance (RABBIT) as the coin you want to buy and your base currency as the payment.
Step 7: If you can't find Rabbit Finance (RABBIT), look for its Smart Contracts.
You can use bscscan or etherscan to locate the smart contract address if the coin you seek is not listed on the DEX. After that, you may copy it and paste it into Pancake Swap. Be aware of scams, and make sure you have the correct contract address.